It’s that time of year once again, where we (mostly) meet with friends and family to exchange gifts and awkwardly make small talk with that one uncle who still thinks NFTs are the future of art. But for some of us, those gatherings are hundreds, maybe even thousands of miles away – so what’s the best method of getting there?
Well, in terms of safety at least, there’s a clear winner – and Icarus would be proud.
Well… jealous, at least.
Safest form of travel: flying
The statistics are clear: flying is the safest form of travel by far, with a microscopic 0.002 fatalities per billion passenger miles travelled. That makes it 155 times safer than train travel; 70 times safer than bus travel; a whopping 1,750 times safer than car travel; and 445 times safer than going by ferry (hey, you never know.)
At least, those are the figures if you’re flying commercial. Things are rather different for those who fly private according to figures from the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the billionaires’ ride of choice racks up more than 5,000 times as many fatalities per passenger hours than its commercial equivalent.
Compare miles rather than hours, and that disparity is even wider: the private jets see a staggering 17,000 times as many fatalities per passenger miles than commercial flights. In fact, commercial planes rack up less than a single death per billion passenger hours.
The reason for this apparent difference in safety is actually fairly straightforward, by the way: “Commercial aviation has significantly more requirements and oversight,” explained Kenneth P. Byrnes, who chairs the flight training department at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s campus in Daytona Beach, Florida, earlier this year.
“In commercial airline travel, the airline is certified by the FAA,” he told CT Insider. “In general aviation, it’s private owners,” Byrnes said. “The pilot is certified by the FAA, and the airplane is certified. But the organization is not certified.”
That’s not the only difference: commercial air pilots generally have more experience, more (and better) training under their belt, and access to dispatch centers and ground maintenance crews. Plus, commercial jets are often bigger, with more advanced safety features, experts point out.
What this adds up to is the fact that, while commercial flights are (at least) an order of magnitude safer than any other method of travel, private jets on their own are actually the second-least safe option you could choose. And we’re sure that knowledge will really make up for the lack of legroom, questionable hygiene, and air that’s 90 percent strangers’ farts that flying coach inevitably comes with.
Still, at least it’s not…
Least safe form of travel: motorbike
Take how comparatively safe flying commercial is compared to everything else, and reverse it: that’s motorcycles. Coming out at about 73 percent more fatalities than private jets per passenger hours, and more than six times the private jet rate per passenger mile, traveling by bike was far and away the most deadly method out there.
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“Motorcycle riders continue to be overrepresented in fatal traffic crashes,” reports the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). “In 2022, there were 6,218 motorcyclists killed – 15 percent of all traffic fatalities.”
And sure, you may think 15 percent isn’t so bad – but when you only make up 3.5 percent of registered vehicles, it’s a bit more worrying. Basically, motorbike riders account for about one in every thirty road users, but one in six traffic deaths; as one researcher put it back in 2013, “a motorcyclist who travel[s] 15 miles every day for a year, ha[s] an astonishing 1 in 860 chance of dying.”
So, what makes this such an unsafe form of travel? Mostly, exactly what you would expect: “Not only does operating a motorcycle require more physical skill and strength than driving a passenger vehicle, but motorcycles lack a protective structure, offering the rider virtually no protection in a crash,” points out the NHTSA.
“Furthermore, the motorcycle’s smaller size relative to most motor vehicles may make it less visible to drivers,” they add, “and will also make it more vulnerable in a collision with larger, heavier passenger vehicles and trucks.”
The result: motorcycle travel produces more than 60 times as many fatalities per passenger mile as going by car; about 684 times as many as train travel; and a mind-boggling 106,000 times as many deaths per mile as commercial flights.
Of course, the statistics aren’t so staggering if you compare the fatalities by time rather than distance – then a motorbike is only, um, 9,285 times as deadly as flying. Phew!
The small print
While these figures seem cut-and-dry, there are some caveats to keep in mind. It may sound obvious, but a commercial flight and a motorbike are very different things: one is huge, seating typically a few hundred passengers at a time, and used mainly for very long journeys; the other is single-occupancy and used more often for shorter journeys.
What this means is that fatality numbers aren’t as comparable as we’d ideally like them to be. There’s a reason we hear about plane crashes on the news and not motorbike accidents, and it’s not just because of their relative frequencies: a single plane crash can cause a huge spike in fatalities for that year, while motorbike accidents are more of a constant series of tiny increases.
Then there’s the ecological argument to consider. Planes may be safer in the immediate sense, but they’re terrible for the environment. Now, we’re not saying cars or motorbikes are perfect, but they’re definitely better than a commercial airliner.
Overall, though, there’s really no doubt that commercial air travel is the safest option – and that motorbikes are the least safe. And that’s not even accounting for the time of year – and, no, we’re not talking about the inclement weather conditions (though they certainly won’t help).
To put it bluntly, people get boozy over the holidays, and drinking and driving don’t go well together. According to the Motorcycle Legal Foundation, riding over Christmas is about 60 percent more deadly than an average three-day weekend; New Year’s is around 67 percent more deadly; and Thanksgiving beats them both, being nearly 3.7 times as deadly as an average three-day weekend.
So, if you’re traveling home for the holidays this year, and you’re not sure how to go – well, as turbulence forecast site Turbli so strikingly put it: “If you live for 85 years and you are on a flight every single hour of it, you will have 1 out of 1,500 chances to die. In a motorcycle, you could die 6 times.”
All “explainer” articles are confirmed by fact checkers to be correct at time of publishing. Text, images, and links may be edited, removed, or added to at a later date to keep information current.
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